The consequences of non-treatment for serious mental illness are devastating. Here are 2 articles on it

Homelessness

People
with untreated psychiatric illnesses comprise one-third, or 200,000 people, of the
estimated 600,000 homeless population. The quality of life for these individuals is
abysmal. Many are victimized regularly. A recent study has found that 28 percent of
homeless people with previous psychiatric hospitalizations obtained some food from garbage
cans and eight percent used garbage cans as a primary food source.

Incarceration

People
with untreated serious brain disorders comprise approximately 16 percent of the total jail
and prison inmate population, or nearly 300,000 individuals. These individuals are often
incarcerated with misdemeanor charges, but sometimes with felony charges, caused by their
psychotic thinking. People with untreated psychiatric illnesses spend twice as much time
in jail than non-ill individuals and are more likely to commit suicide.

Episodes of Violence

There are approximately 1,000 homicides  among the estimated 20,000 total
homicides in the U.S.  committed each year by people with untreated schizophrenia
and manic-depressive illness. According to a 1994 Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics Special Report, "Murder in Families," 4.3 percent of homicides
committed in 1988 were by people with a history of untreated mental illness (study based
on 20,860 murders nationwide).

The Department of Justice report also found:

of spouses killed by spouse  12.3 percent of
defendants had a history of untreated mental illness;

of children killed by parent  15.8 percent of
defendants had a history of untreated mental illness;

of parents killed by children  25.1 percent of
defendants had a history of untreated mental illness; and

of siblings killed by sibling  17.3 percent of
defendants had a history of untreated mental illness.

A 1998 MacArthur Foundation study found that people with
serious brain disorders committed twice as many acts of violence in the period immediately
prior to their hospitalization, when they were not taking medication, compared with the
post-hospitalization period when most of them were receiving assisted treatment. Important
to note, the study showed a 50 percent reduction in rate of violence among those treated
for their illness.

Victimization

Most
crimes against individuals with severe psychiatric disorders are not reported; in those
instances in which they are reported officials often ignore them. Purse snatchings and the
stealing of disability checks are common, and even rape or murder are not rare.

Suicide

Suicide
is the number one cause of premature death among people with schizophrenia, with an
estimated 10 percent to 13 percent killing themselves. Suicide is even more pervasive in
individuals with bipolar disorder, with 15 percent to 17 percent taking their own lives.
The extreme depression and psychoses that can result due to lack of treatment are the
usual causes of death in these sad cases. These suicide rates can be compared to the
general population, which is approximately one percent.

The longer individuals with serious
brain disorders go untreated, the more uncertain their prospects for long-term recovery
become. Recent studies have suggested that early treatment may lead to better clinical
outcomes, while delaying treatment leads to worse outcomes. For example:

A 1997 study from California (Wyatt et. al.) compared people
with schizophrenia who received psychotherapy alone (89 patients) versus those who
received antipsychotic medications (92 patients); those who received medications had much
better outcomes three and seven years later.

A 1998 study from England (Hopkins et. al.) revealed that
delusions and hallucinations among patients suffering from psychosis increased in severity
the longer treatment was withheld from the time of the initial psychotic break (51
patients were included in the study).

A 1994 study from New York (Liebeman et. al.) showed that
the longer a patient waited to receive treatment for a psychotic episode, the longer it
took to get the illness into remission (70 patients were included in the study).

A 1998 study from Italy (Tondo et. al.) demonstrated that
the sooner patients were started on lithium for their manic-depressive illness, the
greater their improvement became (317 patients participated in the study).

Fiscal Costs

Schizophrenia
and manic-depressive illness are expensive diseases. A recent study found that the cost of
schizophrenia alone was comparable to the cost of arthritis or coronary artery disease
(D.J. Kupfer and F.E. Bloom, eds., Psychopharmacology: The FourthGeneration of
Progress, 1995):

schizophrenia costs $33 billion per year;

arthritis costs $38 billion per year; and

coronary artery disease costs $43 billion per year.

The costs included both direct costs of treatment as well
as indirect costs such as lost productivity:

Federal Benefits
A significant percentage of government income benefits also go to people with severe
mental illnesses. For example:

Fifteen percent of Medicaid recipients have a serious
psychiatric disorder;

Thirty-one percent of Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
recipients have a serious psychiatric disorder;

Thirteen percent of those receiving VA disability benefits
have a serious psychiatric disorder.

Schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness are thus major
contributors to the escalating costs of state and federal programs.

Incarceration and Related Costs
It is a mistake to think that money is saved overall by not treating individuals with
severe psychiatric disorders. Individuals who are untreated for their illness cost money
by being incarcerated. For example, the total annual cost for these illnesses in jails and
prisons is estimated by the Department of Justice Source Book on Criminal Justice
Statistics (1996) to be $15 billion (based on an estimated cost of $50,000 per ill inmate
per year, and 300,000 individuals with serious psychiatric disorders being incarcerated.)

Adding to this expense are court costs, police costs,
social services costs, and ambulance and emergency room costs. A study of schizophrenia
costs in England reported that "97 percent of direct costs are incurred by less than
half the patients" and concluded that "treatments which reduce the dependence
and disability of those most severely affected by schizophrenia are likely to have a large
effect on the total cost of the disease to society and may, therefore, be cost-effective,
even though they appear expensive initially." (Davies and Drummond, British Journal
of Psychiatry, 165 (Suppl. 25): 18-21, 1994).

When calculating the fiscal costs of untreated severe
psychiatric disorders, intangible costs must also be included: the deterioration of public
transportation facilities, loss of use of public parks, disruption of public libraries,
and losses due to suicide. The largest intangible cost, of course, is the effect on the
family.

In sum, severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia
and manic-depressive illness are costly three times over: Society must raise and educate
the individual destined to become afflicted; people with the illnesses are often unable to
contribute economically to society; and many require costly services from society for the
rest of their lives.

HOMELESSNESS, INCARCERATION,
EPISODES OF VIOLENCE:
WAY OF LIFE FOR ALMOST HALF OF AMERICANS WITH UNTREATED SCHIZOOPHREMIA AND BIPOLAR

National Disgrace:
Millions of Americans with Serious Brain Disorders Go UntreatedAn estimated 4.5 million Americans today suffer from two of the severest forms of brain disorders, schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness (2.2
million people suffer from schizophrenia and 2.3 million suffer from bipolar disorder).
According to the National Advisory Mental Health Council, an estimated 40 percent of these
individuals, or 1.8 million people, are not receiving treatment on any given day,
resulting in homelessness, incarceration, and violence. The reasons for this are many,
including economic factors, the failure of deinstitutionalization, civil liberty issues as
well as the effects of the illnesses themselves.

Economic factors and the failure of deinstitutionalization are the two leading causes
of todays crisis situation. A greedy game of musical chairs, or cost shifting by
state and local governments to the federal government, especially to Medicaid, has played
a pivotal role. As a result, individuals with serious brain disorders have been dumped out
of psychiatric hospitals and shoved into nursing homes and general hospitals (many of
which offer worse care than the psychiatric hospitals from which they were discharged),
and forced onto the streets and into jails.

Since its beginnings in 1955, deinstitutionalization has been more about political
correctness than scientific knowledge. When deinstitutionalization began there had been no
scientifically sound studies conducted on how to best reintroduce individuals with the
severest brain diseases back in to the community. In addition, there have been very few
services available to these individuals when they are released into the community.

Battles in the nations courtrooms over individual civil rights also have helped
to further jeopardize Americas most vulnerable citizens. Civil liberty advocates
have changed state laws to such an extent that it is now virtually impossible to assist in
the treatment of psychotic individuals unless they first pose extreme and imminent danger
to themselves or society.

Adding to this crisis are the illnesses themselves. Schizophrenia and manic-depressive
illness greatly impair self-awareness for many people so they do not realize they are sick
and in need of treatment. Unfortunately, todays state mental health systems and
treatment laws  that oversee the care and treatment these individuals receive 
play right into the vulnerability of these devastating diseases with the effect that far
too many people remain imprisoned by their illness.

Federal Dollars Fuel Disjointed, Uncoordinated
Care

Prior to the 1960s, when federal funds for psychiatric
care became available, the public psychiatric care system was almost completely run by the
states, often in partnership with local counties or cities. Since then, the public
psychiatric care system has become a hodgepodge of categorical programs funded by myriad
federal, state, and local sources. The primary question that drives the system is not
"what does the patient need?" but rather "what will federal programs pay
for?"

Deinstitutionalization A Rocky Road To NowhereDeinstitutionalization, the name given to the policy of moving people with serious
brain disorders out of large state institutions and then permanently closing part or all
of those institutions, has been a major contributing factor to increased homelessness,
incarceration and acts of violence.

Beginning in 1955 with the widespread introduction
of the first, effective antipsychotic medication chlorpromazine, or Thorazine, the stage
was set for moving patients out of hospital settings. The pace of deinstitutionalization
accelerated significantly following the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare a decade later.
While in state hospitals, patients were the fiscal responsibility of the states, but by
discharging them, the states effectively shifted the majority of that responsibility to
the federal government.

In 1965, the federal government specifically excluded Medicaid payments for patients in
state psychiatric hospitals and other "institutions for the treatment of mental
diseases," or IMDs, to accomplish two goals: 1) to foster deinstitutionalization; and
2) to shift the costs back to the states which were viewed by the federal government as
traditionally responsible for such care. States proceeded to transfer massive numbers of
patients from state hospitals to nursing homes and the community where Medicaid
reimbursement was available. (Note: IMDs were defined by the federal government as
"institutions or residences in which more than 16 individuals reside, at least half
of who have a primary psychiatric diagnosis.")

Since 1960, more than 90 percent of state psychiatric hospital beds have been
eliminated. In 1955, there were 559,000 individuals with serious brain disorders in state
psychiatric hospitals. Today, there are less than 70,000. Based on the nations
population increase between 1955 and 1996 from 166 million to 265 million, if there were
the same number of patients per capita in the hospitals today as there were in 1955, their
total number today would be 893,000.

The pace of psychiatric hospital closures has accelerated. In the 1990s, 44 state
psychiatric hospitals closed their doors, more closings than in the previous two decades
combined. Nearly half of state psychiatric hospital beds closed between 1990 and 2000.

Because of incentives created by federal programs, hundreds of thousands of patients
who technically have been deinstitutionalized have in reality been transinstitutionalized to nursing homes and other similar institutions where federal funds pay most of the costs.
These alternative institutions, however, lack the full range of services needed to
adequately care for persons with severe brain disorders.

Psychiatric Patients Dumped into Nursing Homes and General HospitalsAs state psychiatric hospitals improved in quality in the 1970s and 1980s, it
became increasingly common to discharge patients from relatively good hospitals with
active rehabilitation programs and transinstitutionalize them to nursing homes, general
hospitals or similar institutions with markedly inferior psychiatric care and no
rehabilitation at all. States save state funds, but transinstitutionalized patients pay a
substantial price for the substandard care.

By the mid-1980s 23 percent of nursing home residents, or 348,313 out of 1,491,400
residents, had a mental disorder.

Costs in general hospitals are often $200 per day or more than the costs in public
psychiatric hospitals. These additional costs are of little consequence to the states
since federal Medicaid dollars are paying the majority of the bill; the states costs
are lower and that is the limit of their concern. Unfortunately, evidence shows that
general hospitals admit psychiatric patients with less severe illnesses, but turn away
those who are more seriously ill. Inpatient stays for people with serious brain disorders
are typically shorter in general hospitals, which compromises the persons ability to
stabilize on medication.

Jails and Shelters Serve as Surrogate HospitalsThe woeful failure to provide appropriate treatment and ongoing follow-up care for
patients discharged from hospitals has sent many individuals with the severest forms of
brain disease spinning through an endless revolving door of hospital admissions and
readmissions, jails, and public shelters.

At any given time there are more individuals
with schizophrenia who are homeless and living on the streets or incarcerated in jails and
prisons than there are in hospitals:

Approximately 200,000 individuals with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness are
homeless, constituting one-third of the estimated 600,000 homeless population. Many eat
from garbage cans and are victimized regularly.

Nearly 300,000 individuals with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness, or 16 percent
of the total inmate population, are in jails and prisons, primarily charged with
misdemeanors, but some charged with felonies, that were caused by their psychotic
thinking.

Less than 70,000 individuals with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness are in state
psychiatric hospitals receiving treatment for their disease.

Violence Real Issue for Untreated Severe Brain Disorders

Violent episodes by individuals with untreated
schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness have risen dramatically, now accounting for at
least 1,000 homicides out of 20,000 total murders committed annually in the United States.
According to a 1994 Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report,
"Murder in Families," 4.3 percent of homicide committed in 1988 were by people
with a history of untreated mental illness (study based on 20,860 murders nationwide.) An
NIMH report indicated that severe and persistent mental illness is a factor in 9%-15% of
violent acts. Recent studies have confirmed that the association between violence and
untreated brain disorders continues to be widespread:

A 1990 study of families with a seriously ill family member reported that 11 percent of
the ill individuals had physically assaulted another person in the previous year.

In 1992, sociologist Henry Steadman studied individuals discharged from psychiatric
hospitals. He found that 27 percent of released patients reported at least one violent act
within four months of discharge.

Another 1992 study, by Bruce Link of Columbia University School of Public Health,
reported that seriously ill individuals living in the community were three times as likely
to use weapons or to "hurt someone badly" as the general population.

A 1998 MacArthur Foundation study found that people with serious brain disorders
committed twice as many acts of violence in the period immediately prior to their
hospitalization, when they were not taking medication, compared with the
post-hospitalization period when most of them were receiving assisted treatment. (The
study showed a 50 percent reduction in rate of violence among those treated for their
illness. Roughly 15.8 percent of individuals with a severe brain disorder committed an act
of violence prior to hospitalized treatment, compared with only 7.9 percent of these same
individuals post-treatment.)

There are three primary predictors of violence, including:

History of past violence, whether or not a person has a serious brain disorder;

Drug and alcohol abuse, whether or not a person has a serious brain disorder; and

Serious brain disorder combined with a failure to take medication.*

Other indicators of potential violence include:

Neurological impairment;

Type of delusions (i.e., paranoid delusions  feeling that others are out to harm
the individual and a feeling that their mind is dominated by forces beyond their control
or that thoughts are being put in their head); and

Type of hallucinations (i.e., command hallucinations).

(*Note: While failure to take medication is one of the top three predictors of
violence, civil rights lawyers have continuously expanded the rights of those with a lack
of insight into their illness to refuse to take medication. Past history of violence is
another major predictor of violent behavior, yet in many states these same civil rights
attorneys have restricted testimony regarding past episodes of violence in determining the
present need for hospitalization and assisted treatment.)

Source: Dr. E. Fuller Torrey

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